Richard Lederer's Literary Trivia
()
About this ebook
The author of Anguished English presents a compendium of fascinating facts and anecdotes about some of literature’s greatest authors and works.
Author and English teacher Richard Lederer is one of the world’s foremost lovers of language and literature. In this endlessly engaging volume, he collects some of the most curious trivia about world-renowned authors and poets as well as their many immortal creations. The perfect gift for bibliophiles, Richard Lederer’s Literary Trivia sheds surprising new light on the books and writers we love.Richard Lederer
Richard Lederer is the author of more than 30 books about language, history, and humor, including his best-selling Anguished English series and his current book, Presidential Trivia. He has been profiled in magazines as diverse as The New Yorker, People, and the National Enquirer and frequently appears on radio as a commentator on language. Dr. Lederer's syndicated column, "Looking at Language," appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States. He has been named International Punster of the Year and Toastmasters International's Golden Gavel winner.
Read more from Richard Lederer
Crazy English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon the English Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Trivia: What We Should All Know About U.S. History, Culture & Geography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Trivia Quiz Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Play of Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pun and Games: Jokes, Riddles, Daffynitions, Tairy Fales, Rhymes, and More Word Play for Kids Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Miracle of Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cunning Linguist: Ribald Riddles, Lascivious Limericks, Carnal Corn, and Other Good, Clean Dirty Fun Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Puns Spooken Here: Word Play for Halloween Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSleeping Dogs Don't Lay: Practical Advice For The Grammatically Challenged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard Lederer's Classic Literary Trivia: From Mythology, Shakespeare, and the Bible Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Richard Lederer's Literary Trivia
Related ebooks
Sherlock Unlocked: Little-known Facts About the World's Greatest Detective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSherlock Holmes Miscellany Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Richard Lederer's Classic Literary Trivia: From Mythology, Shakespeare, and the Bible Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Condor in the Stacks Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Three Musketeers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The True Benjamin Franklin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCommon Phrases: And the Amazing Stories Behind Them Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Presidential Wit and Wisdom: Memorable Quotes from George Washington to Barack Obama Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNon-Essential Mnemonics: An Unnecessary Journey into Senseless Knowledge Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Reno Court of Inquiry: Introduction, Day One and Day Two Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Oxford Book of American Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBank Fraud & Other Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Put-Downs: Insults with style Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Cynic Looks At Life: "Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMental Floss: Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Loose Canon: The Extraordinary Songs of Clive James and Pete Atkin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Smart Words and Wicked Wit of William Shakespeare Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Coast to Coast Noir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPuns Spooken Here: Word Play for Halloween Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poison Belt (Professor Challenger Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories by English Authors: England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMental Floss: Scatterbrained Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Haunted Salisbury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Games & Activities For You
The Nightingale: A Novel by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Best F*cking Activity Book Ever: Irreverent (and Slightly Vulgar) Activities for Adults Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5101 Fun Personality Quizzes: Who Are You . . . Really?! Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Everything Lateral Thinking Puzzles Book: Hundreds of Puzzles to Help You Think Outside the Box Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSerial Killer Trivia: Fascinating Facts and Disturbing Details That Will Freak You the F*ck Out Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas (Trivia-On-Books) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/530 Interactive Brainteasers to Warm Up your Brain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChess: Chess Masterclass Guide to Chess Tactics, Chess Openings & Chess Strategies Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bored Games: 100+ In-Person and Online Games to Keep Everyone Entertained Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Draw Anything Anytime: A Beginner's Guide to Cute and Easy Doodles (Over 1,000 Illustrations) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How To Beat Anyone At Chess: The Best Chess Tips, Moves, and Tactics to Checkmate Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Book of Nature Activities: A Year-Round Guide to Outdoor Learning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Trivia-On-Books) Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Book of Card Games: The Complete Rules to the Classics, Family Favorites, and Forgotten Games Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHoyle's Rules of Games - Descriptions of Indoor Games of Skill and Chance, with Advice on Skillful Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Star Wars: Book of Lists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInto the Dungeon: A Choose-Your-Own-Path Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51001 Chess Exercises for Beginners: The Tactics Workbook that Explains the Basic Concepts, Too Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of English Magic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuiz Master: 10,000 general knowledge questions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Stuff You Should Know: An Incomplete Compendium of Mostly Interesting Things Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Best Bar Trivia Book Ever: All You Need for Pub Quiz Domination Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (Trivia-On-Books) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for Richard Lederer's Literary Trivia
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Richard Lederer's Literary Trivia - Richard Lederer
Introduction
Literature lives. Literature endures. Literature prevails. That’s because readers bestow a special kind of life upon people who have existed only in books. Figments though they may be, literary characters can assume a vitality and longevity that pulse more powerfully than flesh and blood.
After many years, the publishers of the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web persuaded E. B. White to record his book on tape. So caught had the author become in the web of his arachnid heroine’s life that it took nineteen tapings before White could read aloud the passage about Charlotte’s death without his voice cracking.
A century earlier, another writer had been deeply affected by the fate of his heroine. Like most of Charles Dickens’s works, The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was published in serial form. The novel won a vast readership on both sides of the Atlantic, and as interest in the fate of the heroine, Little Nell, grew intense, circulation reached the staggering figure of 100,000, a record unequaled by any other of Dickens’s major novels. In New York, 6,000 people crowded the wharf where the ship carrying the final Master Humphrey’s Clock magazine installment was due to dock. As it approached, the crowd’s impatience grew to such a pitch that they cried out as one to the sailors, Does Little Nell die?
Alas, Little Nell did die, and tens of thousands of readers’ hearts broke. The often ferocious literary critic Lord Jeffrey was found weeping with his head on his library table. You’ll be sorry to hear,
he sobbed to a friend, that little Nelly, Boz’s little Nelly, is dead.
Daniel O’Connell, an Irish M.P., burst out crying, He should not have killed her,
and then, in anguish, threw the book out of the window of the train in which he was traveling. A diary of the time records another reader lamenting, The villain! The rascal! The bloodthirsty scoundrel! He killed my little Nell! He killed my sweet little child!
That bloodthirsty scoundrel
was himself shattered by the loss of his heroine. In a letter to a friend Dickens wrote, I am the wretchedest of the wretched. It [Nell’s death] casts the most horrible shadow upon me, and it is as much as I can do to keep moving at all. Nobody will miss her like I shall.
Even more famous than Charlotte and Little Nell is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first consulting detective. The intrepid sleuth’s deerstalker hat, Inverness cape, calabash pipe, and magnifying glass are recognized by readers everywhere, and the stories have been translated into more than sixty languages, from Arabic to Yiddish.
In December of 1887, Sherlock Holmes came into the world as an unheralded and unnoticed Yuletide child in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. When, not long after, The Strand Magazine began the monthly serialization of the first dozen short stories entitled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
the issues sold tens of thousands and the public furiously clamored for more.
At the height of success, however, the creator wearied of his creation. He yearned for higher writing
and felt his special calling to be the historical novel. In December 1893, Doyle introduced the arch criminal Professor James Moriarty into the last story in the Memoirs series. In The Final Problem,
Holmes and the evil professor wrestle at a cliff’s edge in Switzerland. Grasping each other frantically, sleuth and villain plummet to their watery deaths at the foot of the Reichenbach Falls.
With Holmes forever destroyed, Doyle felt he could abandon his mystery stories and turn his authorial eyes to the romantic landscapes of the Middle Ages. He longed to chronicle the clangor of medieval battles, the derring-do